Bio

Karan Chopra (@karchopra) a is Executive Vice President and Co-Founder of Opportunity@Work, where he provides leadership on strategic direction and execution of Opportunity@Work’s priorities and the TechHire initiative. He co-founded Opportunity@Work because he believes that meaningful work is not just a matter of economic wellbeing but of individual dignity.

Karan’s career has focused on building entrepreneurial ventures that increase upward mobility and provide opportunity for all. Prior to co-founding Opportunity@Work, Karan was the co-founder and director of GADCO (Global Agri-Development Company) — a vertically-integrated agri-food business in sub-Saharan Africa. He led the company from business plan to building and operating the largest rice farm in Ghana, developing a processing center and launching a packaged food brand that contributed to domestic food security in Ghana and impacted the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. Leading publications and institutions, including World Bank, UNDP, World Economic Forum, Financial Times and Guardian, have featured GADCO.

Karan is also the co-founder of WAVE (West Africa Vocational Education), a social venture tackling youth unemployment in Nigeria. WAVE is empowering West African youth with industry relevant skills and access to jobs while improving outcomes for employers. Prior to this, Karan was at McKinsey & Company where he was awarded the social sector fellowship. Prior to this, Karan was a software developer with Siemens.

Karan holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering with highest honors from Georgia Tech and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School with high distinction graduating as a Baker Scholar. In 2014, Forbes named Karan in its 2014 list of Forbes 30 under 30 Social Entrepreneurs by Forbes magazine and selected as a New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute.

More federal agencies breached

A new report came to light last week that Russia hacked an NSA contractor’s home computer back in 2015. We’re just finding out about it now, but officials discovered it in Spring 2016. According to the Wall Street Journal, Russia stole sensitive information that lays out how the U.S. hacks into foreign governments’ computer networks. The Russian hackers apparently got in via the Kaspersky antivirus software the contractor was running on his computer. A separate Fed Scoop report found that hackers breached the Federal Deposit and Insurance Corp. more than 50 times between 2015 and 2016. Hackers exposed the personal identifying information of hundreds of thousands of Americans in those breaches.

Google crackdown on fake news draws protest from diverse media voices

Google’s crackdown on fake news is biased against smaller, independent content producers. That’s a according to several smaller content producers that have noticed sharp declines in their web traffic. The declines have come since April. That’s when Google announced its Project Owl initiative the company says it designed to boost more authoritative content. Daisuke Wakabayashi reports in the New York Times.

The IRS’s Deputy Commissioner Jeffrey Tribiano told the House Ways and Means Committee that the contract was a “bridge contract.” The IRS had put the contract out for rebid and awarded the new contract to Experian. But Equifax protested that decision. As a result, Tribiano said, the IRS was under pressure to sign a bridge contract with Equifax since the existing one was set to expire on September 29th.

Tribiano told members of Congress that if the IRS failed to sign the bridge contract, millions of Americans would be unable to get their credit transcripts. But the Government Accountability Office says the IRS could have moved forward with Experian. It said that the IRS could have moved forward with Experian if it considered doing so to be in the best interests of the United States. The GAO is expected to decide the outcome of Equifax’s protest against the Experian award on October 16th.

Backpage.com settles with 3 women

Backpage.com settled with 3 women who allege they were victims of sex trafficking that the now-defunct site facilitated. The women were between the ages of 13 and 15 when the alleged sex trafficking happened. The court did not disclose the amount of the settlement. The parties settled in Pierce County, Washington Superior Court, which is in the Seattle area. In the meantime, IBM has announced that it is backing Senator Rob Portman’s bill to make websites amore accountable for content posted by third parties.

Marsha Blackburn running for Senate

Marsha Blackburn announced last week in a YouTube video that she’s running for Bob Corker’s Senate seat in Tennessee. But Twitter took down Blackburn’s campaign ad because in it, she talks about having fought against “the sale of baby body parts”.

Verizon announced last week that, back in 2013, hackers compromised ALL of Yahoo’s 3 billion accounts. Before the acquisition, Yahoo! had said that the hacks affected just 1 billion accounts. Verizon acquired Amazon earlier this year for $4.5 billion. Nicole Perlroth reports in the New York Times.

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